


The Letter

by MagpieTales



Series: Long Haul Saga [4]
Category: Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris
Genre: Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3753220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieTales/pseuds/MagpieTales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, left behind and in limbo, wasn't ready to let go. Even if all he had left of Sookie was a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Letter

**Author's Note:**

> A reminder of what had happened at the end of Turbulence:  
> Sookie's marriage to Sam is on the rocks. Saving Sam's life by wishing on the Cluviel Dor created a magical tie between them, a tie that was slowly tearing Sam apart. Sookie travelled to England to remove it, leaving Sam in Louisiana. The Letter is set about four months after she left.

It was an unseasonably warm morning in March and the land around the old farmhouse was flushed green with new spring growth. Not all of that growth was welcome — a pile of weeds lay limp and wilted on the grass near the porch steps. 

A man knelt beside them, working the soil of the flowerbed with a rusting trowel, his shirt sleeves rolled up in the heat. A handsome man, wiry and compact, with an ease to his movements. A man comfortable in his own skin, perhaps. Dirt encrusted his hands and smeared his faded jeans, and he paused every so often to wipe his brow on his forearm. Intent on his task, he worked the bed steadily, unhurriedly, careful not to disturb the cultivated plants growing amongst the less welcome wild intruders. 

Once the soil within his reach was clear, he got to his feet and stretched. The movement was stiff and slow. He went to the trash can to dump the weeds, washed up at the hose, rinsed off the old trowel and returned it to the shed, pausing to lean heavily against the door after he'd locked it. 

Although his red-gold hair showed a touch more grey at the temples than it should, he didn't look old enough to be exhausted by such a meagre task. Now he wasn’t hunched over the dirt it was apparent something other than age had sapped his vitality. His tan was faded, as if he hadn’t seen the sun for months; his clothes were loose on his frame, as if he'd lost weight suddenly; and, most tellingly of all, his eyes were shadowed by recent pain. 

… 

Sam Merlotte stood in the yard surveying his handiwork. It had taken three pitifully short sessions just to get that one bed weeded, but he’d keep coming back until all of them were done, even if it took him a month. He reckoned it might too; he tired so easily now. He shook his head ruefully. Being a shifter, he’d never had to deal with a long convalescence before and it was frustrating the hell out of him. 

It comforted him though, coming here. They’d told him at the clinic that the blessing Niall had put on the land was almost extinguished, so the comfort he felt wasn’t down to any lingering fairy magic. He’d had a bellyful of that anyway. 

No, it was something far simpler. Coming here made him feel closer to his absent wife. 

Sookie had been gone these past four months, but three days ago Sam found himself pulling up in front of the house they'd shared. The flourishing weeds caught his attention and he still had a key to the shed. Fetching the trowel, he'd sunk into the mindless the rhythm of digging and pulling, relishing the fresh air and the enticing scents drifting over from the woods. 

Shifters had an innate affinity to nature and the time outdoors had done him a power of good. So he came back yesterday. And again today. 

He hadn’t attempted to explain it to himself, but he took some small satisfaction from knowing that when Sookie got home she would find the garden well-tended, and it would be by his hand. 

She'd always hated weeding. 

Folks in Bon Temps would be shocked to hear he was tending her flowerbeds when he wasn’t even living in her house. He could just hear Maxine Fortenberry telling everyone what a fool he was, and maybe she'd be right. He reminded himself, again, that he had every right to be furious with Sookie after the way she’d taken off, without so much as a goodbye for him, her ever-loving husband. 

But the thought had no fire to it. He’d given up righteous anger once he needed all his energy for other things. Like breathing. Now the only emotion he had left to hold onto where Sookie was concerned was sadness. A deep, wistful sadness over what might have been. 

Sam sighed. Feeling the sun's heat in the dampness of his collar and the way his shirt stuck to his back, he made for the porch and its offer of shade. As he started up the steps, his hand on the railing for support, the cell phone he'd left on the porch table rang out twice. 

He groaned. Dollars to donuts that was his mom.

When Ludwig had finally let him leave her clinic a fortnight ago, his mom Bernie had insisted on staying with him at the duplex. _Just for a few days, son, until I know you can manage._ It had taken a whole week to convince her to go back home to Texas and she'd called every day since to touch base with him. Every day for the last seven, anyway. 

His phone buzzed again, like an angry wasp. He picked it up and looked at it in the cool of the porch. Yep, mom. 

She'd left a message: _Call me._ If he didn't, she’d keeping on calling. Might even take it into her head to drive over to Bon Temps again if he stayed silent long enough, and that was the last thing he needed. He couldn't stomach another week of her fussing. Wiping the sweat off his neck, he leaned a hip against the railing and called her back. 

“Hi, mom,” he said when she picked up, careful to keep his voice cheerful. 

“Hi, son. How are you today?” 

“Good, good. Sky’s clear and blue. I was sitting in the yard catching some rays.” A white lie. She’d be apoplectic if she knew whose yard he was in, and weeding when he should be resting too. _That damn woman_ was by far the mildest thing she’d called Sookie in the months since his wife had upped and left. 

“That’s great, Sam. You’ve been cooped up inside for far too—” 

She cut off abruptly and in the sharp silence Sam heard the fear she couldn’t voice. Heard it loud and clear, and felt his own echo of it too. It was always there, lurking in back of his mind — the fear that he'd never shift again. 

Ludwig had told him not to try until the next full moon, warned he might not be strong enough even then. Not only was he physically weak, but during the worst of his illness she'd been forced to suppress his shifting. The drugs for that carried a risk and were usually given sparingly, for days at a time not the weeks he'd been on them. 

Ludwig, as always, had been blunt: the effects could be permanent. It was a bleak prospect. Shifters who lost the ability to shape-change mostly took their own lives or lost themselves in addiction. 

It could be months before he knew for sure, too. Still, he was improving, albeit not as fast as he'd like. And the full moon was a fortnight away yet. He'd be stronger by then for sure. Why, a week ago he couldn’t even manage light yard-work. Might as well be optimistic. 

But neither he nor his mom would truly relax until he shifted. So, swallowing his own fear, he picked a topic guaranteed to distract his mom from hers. “How are the grandkids? Did they miss you?” 

“Oh, little Gail has grown like a weed. You'd hardly recognise her.” 

“I bet,” he said, forcing a chuckle. 

It did the trick. His mom drowned out that silence, complaining at some length that Gail was reluctant to eat her greens. She laid the blame for that squarely on Gail's mother, Deidra, who she said was far too indulgent. Sam smiled to himself as his mom rattled on, relieved her focus was off of him. He wondered idly if Deidra was glad to have her mother-in-law back in Texas for babysitting duties, or if she wished Bernie was still a state away. 

After a few minutes of making appropriate noises, he faked a yawn. It worked. His mom took the hint and wrapped up the call. 

Pocketing his phone, Sam rested his hands on the porch railing and stared blindly at the tree line. His brush with death had hit his mom hard. Understanding that, he'd let her cluck over him like a mother hen for longer than he should have, but all that fussing had gotten real suffocating, real fast. 

He was a grown man, dammit, not a little kid. Hadn't been one for years. Hell, he wasn't even the same person he was ten years ago. 

Neither was his mom. She hadn’t been the same since his dad died, not really. He’d barely noticed at first, the way she'd gradually turned inwards, become less open, more suspicious of other people, more secretive. 

'Course, shifters had to be secretive. Sam certainly found that out once he hit puberty and discovered he could turn into any animal that took his fancy. There were so many things he couldn't tell his friends, so many experiences he couldn't share. It put a barrier between him and everyone else. Made him feel like a misfit, an outsider. Made him feel alone. 

Sam worried at a rough spot on the railing with his thumbnail, frowning as he pulled a splinter of wood free. He'd never considered that his mom might feel that isolation as keenly as he did, but he was starting to suspect she did. 

She'd never seemed lonely when he was a kid. His dad had been good with people, a real natural at setting them at ease. (Sam liked to think he’d inherited that talent. That was why he’d opened a bar. That, and it seemed a good way to establish himself in Bon Temps.) No, his parents had never wanted for friends to socialise with while his dad was alive. It was only after his dad passed that his mom began to close herself off. 

Then she went and married that idiot Don. 

Sam knew how hard it was, dating a regular human, keeping so much of yourself hidden. He’d struggled with it as a teenager, but it was that or stay single. He didn't blame his mom for marrying again, not exactly. He just wished she'd picked better. Picked a husband whose mind was open a crack, one who wouldn't reach for a shotgun the first time he saw her shift into an animal. 

Hell, if he'd known what a jackass Don was, he'd have been with his mom the night of the Reveal and not at Merlotte's showing Bon Temps his own wild side. His mom sure had it rough that year. It had devastated her, Don insisting on a divorce, and it left her… Well, no two ways about it, she was bitter, resentful. Even Sam could see that. 

Some of the things she said about Sookie and her brother Jason didn't bear repeating. Vile, ugly things that made Sam grimace as if he'd bitten into a lemon when he thought of them. He’d never heard her talk like that before. But he should have known his mom wouldn't warm to Sookie. She'd never liked any of his girlfriends. 

Hell, that was half the reason he hadn't taken Jannalynn home for Craig and Deidra's wedding. Jannalynn was already a tough sell because werewolves were beneath true shifters in his mom’s eyes. And she disapproved of pack politics. Didn't really see a need for packs, like most shifters. Introducing them would have been a disaster, what with Jannalynn so heavily involved in Longtooth, so ambitious to rise up the ranks. 

But then pretty much everything about Jannalynn was a disaster. 

The memories came unbidden and fast: _A dark parking lot, a woman snarling, a blade flashing, catching the light as it arcs downwards. Shock warring with fury on Jannalynn's face. The blade biting deep into his chest, the searing—_

Sam gripped the railing hard, cutting off the images. No. That water washed under the bridge long ago. No need to dwell on it. 

But an itch started up deep in his chest, as if the muscles there remembered that terrible night better than he did. He rubbed at it, soothing it away. There was no scar there. The fairy magic had taken that, along with his choices. The bitter thought thinned his lips and tightened his jaw, until a noisy group of finches swooped along the trees, flashing their yellow bellies at him and coaxing a brief smile onto his face. 

Yes, it _was_ good to be alive, but that night was the start of it all. That goddamn wish was what got them into this mess. Sookie's wish, the wish that saved his life.Oh, his mom was plenty grateful to Sookie for that, but not grateful enough to accept Sam marrying her. Never that. 

Because his mom had her heart set on him finding a shifter match, and after his illness Sam knew why. 

It all started back in December, a few days after Sookie left. Sam collapsed as he left his trailer one morning. His mom rushed him to Ludwig’s clinic where he spent two months in a critical condition, weak as a kitten and often sedated for his own protection as his body fought itself and tried to shift uncontrollably. His mom kept a vigil at his bedside, never knowing when or even if he'd recover. He couldn't imagine what that had been like for her, watching the fairy magic rip him apart from the inside out, powerless to stop it. 

Then, in February, as abruptly as it began, it ended. A sharp jolt of intense pain woke him, an all-over, consuming, burning pain. When the agony faded, a weight had gone from his chest, it was easier to breathe, and he knew deep in his bones his ordeal was over. Barring his unexpectedly long convalescence to full health anyway, but he didn't know about that at the time. 

Those weeks while the magic tore at him were hazy now, days and nights blurring into a long delirium, but one of those nights he woke to drops landing soft and wet on his hand. The hand that his mom, sitting at his bedside, would clutch at all night some nights. His eyes still closed, Sam had lain there, the smell of salt tears filling his nose as his mom pleaded with him, begging him not to die. 

_Not before you have a child, Sam. Not before I keep my promise to your dad._

Much later, after the magic had released its grip, that night came back to Sam and he realised what it meant. His mom promised Dad that his line wouldn't peter out with Sam, that she'd see to it Sam found a shifter mate. 

True shifters were a rare breed and getting rarer, so carrying on the line had been real important to his dad, especially as his siblings, a twin brother and a half-sister, had died young and childless. And of his own children, Sam was the only one who was full shifter, the only one who could pass that on. 

His dad had spoken about it a time or two. This was back when Sam was a teenager, irritated beyond all get out by his dad's endless lectures on duty, responsibility, and how special it was to be a shifter – something that didn’t feel very special to Sam at the time. Being a shifter only seemed to bring him heartache and alienation. Whenever his dad gave one of those lectures, it triggered an almighty argument. 

But that was years ago. If it meant so much to Dad, he should've spoken to Sam about it again, before he died. Not put that burden on Mom. 

Sam sighed. He knew why his dad hadn't said anything. They'd been butting heads ever since Sam began to shift. Too much alike, maybe. Sam had been a particularly wild teenager, hellbent on partying and chasing tail, and not on listening to his folks. Not that his dad was an easy man to get along with, either. 

When Sam broke the news that he'd joined the army, all his dad did was lecture him about the danger of discovery: _It's plain reckless, son. How will you hide what you are? And it's awful convenient you leaving now. Leaving all the trouble you've caused behind, eh? Off to greener pastures, 'stead of clearing up your mess like a real man._

Sam snorted. Greener pastures! As if the army was a walk in the park, as if serving your country was some big adventure that promised all the parties and girls a young man could wish for. Dad had no idea. 

They'd had one hell of a fight the night he left. Barely spoke all through his time in the military too, despite Mom's constant efforts to make peace. It was only when Sam came home for good that his dad grudgingly admitted it had been for the best, saying gruffly it had made a man of him at last. Then Dad passed before they had a chance to truly mend fences, and shortly after that Sam left for Louisiana to start afresh, out from under the cloud of regrets that hung over him in Texas. 

But regrets had a way of following you no matter how far you ran. And he'd made plenty of new ones in Bon Temps. 

The sticky heat pulled Sam back into the present. He was real thirsty. Patting his shirt pocket absently, he glanced wistfully at the locked front door. The spare key was in the same place it always was, but he'd moved out right before Sookie took off and he didn’t feel right about going inside while she was gone. He hoped Michele, Jason’s wife, was keeping it tidy in there. He didn't fault them for letting the garden go though. Michele was too heavily pregnant for weeding, and Jason had the road crew and his own land to keep him busy. 

Sitting down at the porch table, Sam poured himself some water from the cooler he’d tucked behind the chair. He gulped down the first cup, but drank the second slowly, savouring its coolness as he settled back and stretched his legs out in front of him. Ten minutes went by while he enjoyed the scents and sounds of spring, watching the bees buzzing leisurely from flower to flower. Then he was ready. 

What better place than here, on the porch of the house he’d shared with his wife? 

He took a folded envelope from his shirt pocket. It had been ripped unevenly, torn open in haste. He carefully extracted the letter inside and smoothed it out on the table. It was written on thick paper, but the corners were dog-eared and the folds were soft, no longer crisp. 

It had been read many times. 

The first time Sam read it, right after Kennedy handed it to him, it made him so furious he barely took any of it in past realising that Sookie had gone off on some dangerous wild-goose chase and been too cowardly to say good-bye to his face. After that he’d been too ill to read anything for months, but someone at the clinic must've found the letter – he vaguely remembered shoving it into his back pocket right before he collapsed – and whoever it was had put it on the little table by his bed. Once he began to recover, he saw it there. 

After a few days of it gnawing at him, he picked it up and read it, only to be hurt by it all over again. He read it a couple days later, but it didn't hurt any less with a clearer head. Still, he was drawn to it. He read it a fourth time, a fifth. Always when he was alone, always carefully, always searching for the truth behind her words. Again, and again, until he knew it by heart. It had become something of a ritual, an exorcism and a solace all in one. 

So, sitting on the porch of his wife's house, he read her letter again. Slowly, savouring each word, even the hurtful ones. 

~~~~~~ 

Sam, 

Niall found a way to remove the unintended consequences of my wish. I have to travel to Europe and I'll be gone a while. I might not be back until late summer. 

I've put Jason and Michele in charge of the house while I’m gone. Mr Cataliades has power of attorney so he'll deal with anything else that comes up. Jason has his number if you need to reach him. There’s a form with this letter that you should take to the bank  tomorrow to take my name off the joint account. Speak to Mr Seacroft, he’s expecting you. 

I promise I'll do everything I can to undo what I did and free you to be yourself again, Sam. I didn’t understand what I was doing that night or the power I was wielding. I swear I didn’t know it would do anything but save your life. I never meant for any of this to happen. I just couldn’t lose you. 

That was my mistake, my responsibility, and I'll do whatever it takes to fix it.

Whatever drew us together, I want you to know that what we had was real. I wanted a life with you, Sam Merlotte, I really did. I tried hard to make it work and for a while there the life we built together was good. More than good. I was happy. I hope you were happy too.

We both made mistakes along the way and I am heartily sorry for every one of mine. I never meant to hurt you, that was the last thing I intended. But you're right, I haven't treated you the way a wife should treat a husband.

I kept things from you, too many things. I see that now. I didn't talk to you about the miscarriages, didn't take you with me to that doctor, didn't tell you what Ludwig said. You deserved better, but I was just so afraid that I could never give you the child you wanted, so scared that you would leave me over it, that I shut you out.

I was an idiot. Please forgive me.

I deeply regret not telling you what the wish had done as soon as I found out. I know you would never, never behave the way you did this last week if you were yourself. You would never hurt me. That wasn’t your fault, none of it. Please don’t beat yourself up about that. Nothing got broke beyond repair. Even Jason’s ego will recover.

I’m sorry I didn’t confide in you like a wife should have. I was just protecting myself I guess, poor excuse though that is. At least when you kept things from me, you did it to protect me.

Not that it was right, keeping me in the dark about my own life, but if I'd opened up to you maybe you would've trusted me with the truth about those guards. Maybe you'd have shared more of yourself too, more of your true nature. Sometimes, being human, I didn’t understand that part of you, just as your mom feared I wouldn’t.

And there's another thing I should have talked to you about: your mom. I should've asked you to stop her interfering months ago. You were so good at getting the rest of your family to accept me. Thank you for that. I'm grateful I got to be part of a bigger family for a while and I'm sorry my quirk made that difficult on occasion.

Difficult for us, too. I know you felt it was invasive at times, however inadvertently I slipped up. It hurt when you shut me out of your head, I won't deny that, but I tried to give you your privacy, really I did. It was just impossible to do that all the time. There's another mistake — I should've warned you how easy it was to hear you long before we got married.

I wish things could have been different, in so many ways.

Ironic, hey? I shouldn’t be making wishes after what happened with the last one. If I’d just taken a second to think about that wish, maybe everything would have worked out just fine for us. Like you said, now we’ll never know, and that’s my biggest regret in a letter full to the brim with them.

Mostly I wish that my dreams of a house full of kids and years of family beach vacations with you had come true. But that’s a very selfish wish, because you deserve more than I have to give. You made me face that after so long not admitting it to myself. I truly believed what I felt for you was enough, but now I see that it wasn’t at all. It was just a pale imitation of the real thing and it was wrong of me to expect you to settle for that when you are worth so much more.

You are a good, kind, decent man, Sam Merlotte. You deserve a wife who loves you with all her heart. I regret that I couldn’t be that woman for you, no matter how hard I tried. If I don’t come back, please find her. She’s out there waiting, I know she is.

You’ve always been a good friend to me, the very best of friends. I hope that we can still be that to each other, but I know in my heart of hearts that I’ve hurt you too badly and it can never be the same. For that, I can only apologise from the bottom of my heart.

Please take care of yourself.

With affection and warmth, your friend, always,

Sookie Stackhouse.

~~~~~~~~~~ 

The most painful word was there, at the end. Sam ran his finger gently over it, tracing the curls and loops of the letters. 

_Stackhouse._

He’d eventually decided, once that particular wound faded to a sting and he could think about it rationally, that it was a blessing she'd signed her maiden name. It kept him from hoping, crazily hoping, that they would stay married when she returned. He thought at first that she'd done it deliberately, to warn him off. But, after going back and forth over it, he reluctantly concluded that she'd probably done it by accident.

It wasn't the first time she'd slipped up and used her old name since they'd gotten married.

There was another sign he’d missed, one of many. Oh, Sookie had certainly thrown herself into married life convincingly enough, but there were a thousand little hints that things were otherwise. Hints that flooded back to haunt him in quiet moments since he’d begun this ritual with her letter. Hints he’d turned a blind eye to for years. Hints that confirmed he'd been in denial about their relationship all along.

Some of that denial was the fairy magic. But not all of it.

He'd wanted Sookie to fall in love with him so bad that he'd convinced himself that putting a ring on her finger made it inevitable. But it hadn't happened. Not when they got engaged, not when they got married, not in two years of living together as man and wife. He thought he could handle waiting for her feelings to catch up to his own, that they, or rather she, was worth it. But the truth had lain in his heart like a twisted piece of shrapnel, sharp and biting, and his happiness had leaked away around it, drop by drop, like blood from a wound.

Sam lifted the letter to his nose and sniffed at it cautiously. He let out a dry bark of laughter. Her scent had faded and all he could smell was himself. Wasn't that just the very essence of their relationship? One-sided.

His love wasn't enough for two, wasn’t enough to carry a marriage by itself. Hell, it wasn’t even enough for him to forgive her when she didn’t treat him right. Oh, it was unfair to expect her to act as if she really did love him when he knew, deep down, that she didn't. But that didn’t stop him being butt-hurt when she failed to live up to his long-cherished hopes, nor did it stop him yearning for more than she could give.

And all the wishing in the world, all the yelling and fighting too, couldn't make someone love you when they didn't.

Especially not Sookie Stackhouse. She was stubborn through and through. How he’d possessed the arrogance to believe he could wear her down, change the way she felt about him…

He’d been a damn fool.

Twice over. If there was ever a human woman he could share everything with, it was Sookie.

But he hadn't, as her letter pointed out. Afraid to lose her, he’d hidden the aspects of his nature that he thought she couldn’t cope with. He couldn't defend his decision to keep her ignorant of her guards and the attempts on her life either. Ignorance was no protection and Sookie was no delicate flower. She'd always faced the worst the supernatural world threw at her without flinching.

She was his wife. No two ways about it, he should've trusted her with more. He’d been far too secretive for a married man. It was his way though, ingrained by years of hiding what he was.

Maybe he was more like his mom than he realised, maybe he'd been born secretive.

The smile that raised was decidedly crooked and it faded fast as Sam's thoughts turned to darker things. Darker things like the jealousy that had gripped him every time he felt Sookie slipping through his fingers, jealousy he’d struggled to hide from her from day one. He couldn't blame the magic for that. He'd wanted to grab on to her and never let go long before she saved his life with that goddamn wish. He winced as Calvin’s terse warning came back to him: _Don’t hold her so tight she can’t breathe._ He'd been envious of every other male who got a shot with her too, murderously envious. 

Yep, Sam had fought against it, and fought against it hard, but his love was the possessive kind. 

Perhaps that was something else he'd inherited from Bernie. She was much the same way with both her husbands. And, some might say, with Sam himself. 

Secrets and jealousy weren’t the worst of his crimes, though. Sam's teeth clenched at the darkest memory of all: _Sookie cowering away from him, face white and terror in her eyes, his bones melting and his flesh transforming, the desire to claw and rend and bite her rising in him like a tide._

She might have forgiven him for that, but he couldn’t forgive himself. That look in her eyes haunted him, and to be the one who put it there… He didn’t see how she could ever forgive him. The fairy magic was no excuse.

But then, Sookie didn’t know it wasn’t the first time he’d laid hands on a woman. Sure, he'd been a teenager, and it was only that one slap, but it had shaken him so thoroughly that he'd guarded tightly against a repeat for years. He hadn’t slipped again.

Not with Callisto, the maenad. Not with Jannalynn, and Lord knew she could try the patience of saint.

He reckoned that was what drew him to impossible, frustrating women, to dangerous female supes. They tested his control and resisting his baser impulses around them proved he wasn’t a monster. Losing control so completely with Sookie, the woman he'd idolised for years, had sickened him to his stomach. It had shaken his confidence, made him believe he _was_ that monster after all.

Then, to find out that goddamn wish was twisting his actions, to find that out from strangers when Sookie already knew and had kept it from him, had let him think he was a monster… Well, that was the last straw. It lit a fierce anger inside him, an anger that he couldn't control, and all the frustrations that had been building inside him for months spilled over in that last, terrible fight.

It was his fault Sookie was in danger. All his fault.

If he hadn't been so angry, if he’d just had a chance to calm down… She barely had time to tell him anything that week. He'd have seen that and forgiven her in a matter of days. They could've talked. Worked out how to fix things. Together. She'd be safe.

But no, he made damn sure she knew how angry he was. Told her he was leaving her, brushed off her pleas to stay and work things out, forced her to admit she didn’t love him. He'd been hateful and, worse, he'd blamed everything on her. Sookie being Sookie took that straight to heart. She didn’t give him a chance to cool off. Oh no. She just shouldered all the blame he'd wrongly heaped on her, like it really was all her doing, and then she rushed off to fix everything.

Rushed halfway round the world. All alone. To save him. By doing God only knew what.

Why the hell did she always feel she had to be the one to jump in feet first and play the hero? He hoped to God that she was okay, wherever the hell she was.

_If I don’t come back…_ No, he refused to give those words from her letter any credence. She was going to come back, period. She just had to. 

Even if he didn’t know how he'd feel about her when she did.

He’d loved her for so long, and the fairy magic had intensified that love tenfold while he was under its spell. Now that magic was gone, his feelings had muted, dimmed. He didn’t know if that was just losing the magic or if it was a natural response to all the heartache, to learning once and for all that his love wasn't returned and was never going to be, but the change left him uncertain, lost. Sookie had been his anchor, and now…

He ran a hand through his hair wearily. Maybe they could go back to being friends. He wasn’t sure if he could handle that after being married to her, but he’d try.

Because she asked it of him.

His mind skittered away from the other thing her letter asked. He wasn’t ready to move on yet, even if Sookie gave it her blessing. They were still married in the eyes of the law and, even if he'd begun to accept he'd have to let her go, he wouldn't give up on her until he saw it in black and white, had the divorce papers in his hands.

Sighing, he folded the letter carefully, put it back in the envelope and returned it to his pocket. He sat for a spell thinking things over, wondering if he could summon the energy to stop by the bar later, see about doing something to get that whole mess back on track.

At the faint sound of a truck turning off the main road, he jerked to his feet. Dammit. Jason.

Things were distinctly chilly between Sam and his brother-in-law. Jason was sure to realise Sam was the one stopping by and weeding the flowerbeds like some kind-hearted trespasser, but he might be content to turn a blind eye to that as long as he didn’t catch Sam in the act.

And that was one confrontation Sam wasn't ready to have anyway. So, before the truck came into view, he snatched up the cooler and loped swiftly into the woods, heading for the cemetery where he'd parked. 

…

Jason jumped out of his truck and slammed the door. He jogged over to the porch, pausing for a second to place Merlotte’s scent and scowl at it. Unlocking the front door with a key from his pocket, he went inside and checked everything was in order, pleased that Merlotte hadn’t been presumptuous enough to enter the house.

He spotted the freshly dug flowerbed on his way out, some ten minutes later. Shaking his head he muttered, “She ain’t dumb enough to fall for that, Merlotte. It’s going to take more than pulling a few weeds to get back into Sookie's good graces.”

He threw a dark look at the woods, but he figured Merlotte was long gone. Too ashamed to show his face, the coward. Not that anyone else thought Merlotte should be ashamed. The whole damn town felt sorry for him after his mysterious 'coma', especially those folks who believed his wife had run out on him in his hour of need.

Jason, however, knew the truth. Sookie hadn't run out on Sam at all, far from it.

But he could hardly tell everyone she was off saving Merlotte from some crazy fairy spell when no-one was supposed to know fairies even existed. And why his sister had to be the one saving Merlotte after that fucker left bruises all over her, Jason didn't know. Sure, Sookie said that was all the spell's doing, but Jason doubted it was entirely to blame. Merlotte was an asshole in his book.

Whenever Jason caught snatches of gossip about his sister around town — and that was far too often in the last week, now the asshole was back — he itched to set all those busybodies straight. Holding his tongue was getting harder and harder. He was real thankful Catfish had had words with the road crew and somehow convinced them that Sookie had good reason to take off when she did. If he had to listen to them trash-talking his sister all day too, he’d have hit somebody for sure.

And he couldn’t afford to get in another fistfight and land himself in jail again. Michele had made that perfectly clear.

Family was family though. Michele ought to understand he felt obliged to stick up for his little sister, but his wife wasn't exactly long on patience at the moment.

Nope, no point in upsetting a pregnant woman. He wasn't suicidal.

Grumbling to himself about how henpecked he was, Jason got into his truck and started it up. Before he pulled away, he looked at the old farmhouse and shook his head. Place just wasn't the same without Sookie. It felt real empty.

He missed her, missed her more than he thought he would. He sure hoped she got back before the newest addition to the Stackhouse clan arrived. Michele had just had a scan to confirm it, and his unborn daughter needed her Aunt Sookie to hurry home, toot de sweet. Who else was gonna teach her all Gran's recipes?


End file.
